by Ted Polakowski
6. June 2011
I want to go back one more time to the nuclear industry and what has happened since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Not because I have become a nuclear industry zealot, but because what is happening there is, I think, very indicative of how the rest of industry and regulators have learned to rely on one another to the detriment of the intended roles each must play to keep all of us safe and the environment clean.
I have been reading the newspaper accounts over the last few weeks of how enraged we have become regarding the closeness of regulator to regulated. Back in early May there was a front page New York Times article titled “Nuclear Agency Beset by Lapses.” The article explained that several years ago, workers at a nuclear power plant caused a leak in a critical cooling water system as they were cleaning a badly corroded section of the pipe. Further investigation found that the company who owned the power plant, knowing that there was a corrosion problem, routinely lowered the minimum thickness of pipe that was deemed safe – seemingly after each time it cleaned up the corrosion. And how could the plant owner do this alone? Well it seems that they didn’t; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) routinely either ignored or condoned the action by not taking further action. The rest of the investigative report in the New York Times seemed to indicate that the oversight approach taken by the NRC was one not of policeman but more of a benevolent family member – my words not theirs.
More recent news articles indicate that the same lax oversight conditions also existed between regulator and regulated in Japan. An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the disaster released on June 1, 2011 suggested, says a Time.com article, that the regulatory structure of Japan’s nuclear industry lacked independence. And that because of this closeness of regulator and regulated the Japanese nuclear power plant was just not robust enough in light of how big a tsunami might beset the plant.
So, let’s assume all this is true. What I am pondering here is why should either party, the regulator or regulated, not take on its own responsibility? It seems like the regulated is playing a game of “how much can I get away with?” and not “what is prudent for safeguarding my facility, my people, and the environment?” It looks like we are getting to believe that as long as we can essentially fool each other into believing whatever action (or non-action) we are trying to get the other side to accept (or at least not to object to) constitutes the result we want. But does it?? Have we as EHS professionals, who populate the ranks of the industrial sites as well as those of regulator, forgotten that we win or lose based upon the actual record we generate, not what the either side said was OK? I believe we have to get back to the point where each and every one of us takes ownership of our jobs and approaches it in the absolute, not in what we can get away with. So there, I have said it, and I hope that you agree with me.
